


time and tide (will set her free)

by purplemechanics



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8X06 spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Finale spoilers, Post 8x06, arya goes to storm's end before she goes west, arya is kind of having a personal crisis i think, except also i need more than THAT, gendry is also but he is WAY more obvious about it, i just need there to be the promise of a future ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 17:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18899431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplemechanics/pseuds/purplemechanics
Summary: When the storm clouds are riding through a winter sky, sail away;orShe goes to see him before she leaves.





	time and tide (will set her free)

**Author's Note:**

> hi i have Emotions

He rides south through the Kingswood not long after Bran is appointed with not much to say to anyone besides Ser Davos, who rides off beside him. She supposes she isn’t surprised, though she feels a twinge in her chest at his leaving. She supposes she might have done the same, were she him. Might have even felt his hurt. She bids farewell to Jon, to her family, and figures it’s her turn too. Her turn to mount her wooden horse and never look back.

Only she knows that she made a choice when she fled the Red Keep, a truth she has kept buried inside her and locked away with memories of men with long dark hair who looked at her as if she meant something. She chose to live. She chose to be alive, and she knew she wouldn’t last much longer with all of these words trapped in her throat, choking her. Too much to say. Not enough ways to say it. Only one person to say it to.

She bids the crew of her ship (provided at Bran’s behest, a Stark wolf howling proudly above them on the sails) meet her slightly north Storm’s End, no place to dock there, and she charges off through the forest, the pounding of her white stallion’s hooves nothing compared to the pounding of her pulse, the racing of her heart. The wind whips tears into her eyes and she doesn’t have it in her to stop their fall. Her hair flies in crazy mane wisps around her and she sees nothing, knows nothing but the path ahead of her and who it leads to.

—

When she reaches the gate, no guards stand to greet her. She hears movement and life within the walls but sees no sign of it. She stands in the shadow of a tower as cold and unyielding as herself, and she thinks that he deserves more than its sort of emptiness. Than her sort.

She swings her leg over her horse and dismounts, feeling unfamiliarly unsure of how to proceed and yet all at once certain that she must. She tests the wooden gate, pushing it with her hand, and it falls open, revealing to her the commotion within. People bustle back and forth across the main yard, shouting to each other, carrying things. A child speeds past her out the gate, his mother shouting after him to make sure he’d be back by supper. Metal clangs, people shout. Sparks fly, food flies off a cart, horses whine, people shout. She pushes her way into the soundscape and spots him right away. He stands atop the short staircase leading to the base of the tower. Many people are speaking to him at once, and Ser Davos seems to be helping him sift through the voices. He points to the forge, his lips forming words that Arya cannot decipher, and a few disperse from his crowd. He continues to address the rest of them individually. He certainly doesn’t look like he was born to stand there. His posture is a bit awkward, a bit stiff. His brow is furrowed and his eyes smolder with the effort of subduing panic. And yet he is focused. He continues to point and speak over the shouting, Ser Davos nodding every once and a while. Arya takes a step back. He is helping all of these people one by one, showing them the way, giving them their orders.

Uncomfortable or not, maybe he was born to stand there after all.

She has half a mind to turn and wait at the corner of the wood until nightfall, slip in unseen through the mist of dusk, to seek him out when he had been given reprieve by his subjects. To let him take one problem at a time. She takes another step back, meaning to go when he lifts his eyes from his personal crowd. They find her, somehow. They always seem to.

She holds his gaze. She almost forgets the people shouting and scurrying all over the courtyard. His eyes are all too revealing, too expressive. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and she knows this, and it should be a reason for her to hate him, but maybe it’s why she loves him. He’s uncertain and full of quiet rage and desperation and something else she can’t quite pin. His eyes are a storm.

Lord of the Stormlands. Maybe he was born to stand there after all.

He leans over to speak to Ser Davos, who then spots her as well. He begins to make his way to her through the busy yard, leaving Gendry with his crowd of petitioners, which grows thinner by the minute. She does not wait for him. She leads her horse to a post by the wall, tying the leather straps as best she can with trembling hands. They hadn’t stopped shaking since she killed the Night King.

“My Lady,” he addresses her. She is too tired to her bones to refute it. She nods and follows him as he continues to pad a trail around the edge of the yard.

“You ought to post someone at the gate,” she comments, avoiding pleasantries. “You’re vulnerable.”

Ser Davos does not look surprised, nor does he look offended. “Lord Gendry and I arrived not long ago. Only a day, though it’s felt much longer. The state of affairs at Storm’s End are a bit… mangled at the moment. ” He didn’t have to tell her. The chaotic scene to their side was plain. “We will send men when we have men to spare. The people of this fortress have not known a true Lord for some time, and have taken to running operations how they see fit.” He glances up at the tower. “It will take some time for them to adjust, I imagine.”

“And him?” She asks, her voice as steady as she knew it would be. “Do you think he will adjust?”

Davos stops in his tracks, turning to look at the steps. Arya stops with him. They observe for a moment as Gendry firmly grasps a man’s shoulder, then sends him on his way. On to the next person. Davos breathes in deeply, then exhales as if the weight of the citadel lay on his shoulders. “I expect he’ll adjust a lot sooner than he realizes.” He turns to look at her, and the wind blows. It is not cold here, not like the north, but her hair stands on end. “He is good. These people are used to cold Lords and cold realities, but he is good. Maybe not a Lord yet, but he is up there, doing his duty and at the very least trying. That means a lot to them.”

Arya’s throat is dry. “You will stay here to help him, then?”

Davos nods and his feet begin to shuffle forward once again, leading them slowly but surely to the staircase. “For the time being, at least. Your sister might have preferred that I stay in the north, but Storm’s End was my home once.” His eyes gleam. “I feel somewhat responsible for its wellbeing.”

They reach the foot of the staircase, and it seems Gendry’s crowd has worn thin, people still shouting, but moreso in the distance than at his face. He finishes speaking with an older woman and looks up to see them approach, the storm on his face still so evident. Arya climbs the steps like they’re mountains, pushing on the soles of her feet like they’re lead.

Gendry says nothing, his turbulent eyes never leaving her face. When she and Ser Davos reach the top, Davos clears his throat. “Shall we speak inside, perhaps offer Lady Stark something to drink?”

“Princess now, though, isn’t it?” Gendry says sharply, and the sky seems to press her closer to the ground. “Sansa is Queen in the North. You are a Princess.”

She smiles a small smile, not finding this funny in the least. “That’s even worse.”  
  
Gendry levels her with his gaze for a moment more, before brushing past her and into the tower. Ser Davos sighs and gestures with his hand that she should follow. She does. The doors echo as they close behind them.

—

The tower is not as cold on the inside as she expected it to be, the stone walls reflecting the flames of numerous hearths. Gendry had led them to a great room, the Round Hall, as she recalled. It was as cavernous and ominous as a cathedral. Ser Davos had excused himself along the way to retrieve refreshments, though she suspects he could sense their tension and wished not to involve himself.

In the center of the room, surrounded by wooden tables and banners of stags, Gendry turns on his heel to face her. Her breath escapes her in a single puff. He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then shuts it again, his gaze boring into her. He is waiting for her.

“I thought you would have said something before you left,” she says, trying to stay neutral, trying not to let on that his hand is clamped around her heart and grows tighter and tighter by the minute.

“And I you, but it seems we both misunderstood each other.” He is angry, she can tell, and he is trying to hold it back. The road to King’s Landing had been one where she had made peace with dying. She had seen it coming and had decided that if her god should take her, it should take those who had wronged her as well. None of it happened the way she thought it would. She didn’t know she would change her mind about wanting to die. She couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted to see what came next. Had been hopeful about the prospects of her life.

And she certainly can’t remember how to express this, how to tell him why she’d left without a goodbye and why she is a different girl standing before him now than she had been then.

She searches his gaze, trying to tell him without words, trying to show him. His eyes narrow and she knows that he does not see. He turns once again and begins to pace away from her, his fury evident in the lines of tension in his arms, his hands curled into improperly-formed fists.

She panics and reaches out to grab his arm. He turns back on her, expression ablaze. Her tongue feels like dragonglass in her mouth.

“Do you have something to say to me,” he growls low, “or did you come all this way to see how royally I’d fuck this up?”

“You won’t,” she breathes. This seems to freeze him. He doesn’t shake her free, so she tightens her hold on him, trying to make him understand. “You won’t fuck this up. You are what these people need and I believe in you.”

Her own admission shatters her will to hide from him. She moves ever-trembling hands up to hold his face. His hair has started to grow. The lines on his face are so much more pronounced, much harder then when they were children. Much more beautiful.

“I don’t know how to tell you what I need to.” Her words echo harshly in the concave of the Round Hall. “I don’t know how to tell anybody anything. I forgot how to speak in my own voice before I came home. Before King’s Landing. I don’t know.”

He shudders, reminded of the time they were separated, maybe feeling as far away from her now as he had then. Still, he says nothing. Does not move, does not respond to her touch.

“I know you’re not mad at me because I refused you,” she says. “I know you better than that.”

“Do you?” he breathes. “Do I know you?”

The grip on her heart tightens so that she must release his face, must reel for a moment. She considers. “I don’t know me,” she says.

“What?”

“I don’t know… who I am. What I’m supposed to be now that there’s no one to run from and no one to kill.”

And there it is, the truth she’s been searching for within herself on this whole road, the truth that perhaps she had died in King’s Landing after all and a new girl, the real Arya Stark, stands in her place.

“And you would have rather died than find out?” He sounds as heartbroken as she feels.

“Maybe,” she admits. “I don’t know. I changed my mind there. The Hound —” She swallows. How to tell his story, how to unravel her crossed strings of morality and mortality, how to understand his mind when she could hardly understand her own? She steels herself like she knows how. “I decided to go a different way. I left the Red Keep.”

His eyebrows lift and for the first time since she arrived, she thinks she can see his glint of concern. “You were in the Red Keep? During the thick of it?”

She nods, and she knows his mind is racing with images of her fighting her way through the blood-soaked streets and piles of ash that were once men. 

“Someone helped me. I was going to be trampled by the crowd, and she helped me up.” She lifts her eyes to the ceiling, thinking maybe if she doesn’t look at him she won’t have to feel like the sky is still falling and flesh is still burning. “She didn’t have to, she didn’t have any reason. She didn’t know who I was. She just helped me because she could. And she died, burned alive with her daughter in her arms.” She looks back at him to see his eyes shine. “I don’t know what to do with that. With her goodness. I’m still alive because of her.”

Gendry takes a step back, seeming almost to stumble, before trudging heavily over to a seat at one of the tables and collapsing into it. He runs his hands over his face. The fury, it seems, has leaked out of him, leaving only an exhaustion so bone-deep she can see it ring off him.

“I’m glad,” he finally mumbles out. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”

She slowly walks over, slowly lowers herself into the chair next to him. Waits for him to slowly say more.

He takes in a big breath. “When I thought I was never gonna see you again, I -“ His voice collapses. He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and looks away from her. “I know what I told you before, and I meant it. None of this means anything to me. It belongs with someone who cares.”

“You care,” she argues. “I’ve seen it just now on the steps. You care.”

“Not like I care for you.” He looks at her, and the Night King is holding her by the throat. The dragon is breathing fire at her. The waif thrusts a knife into her stomach. Every hit she’s ever taken rests on her brow, nothing compared to his words, to his love.

He can see she’s overwhelmed, somehow, he can see through her, around her, _her_. He can see her. He sighs. “Of course I’m not angry that you refused me. I was stupid to have thrown that around in the first place. Thought I meant something now that a Mad Queen had lifted her cup to me.” His lips purse. “I wish you had told me you were going, though. I wanted to say goodbye before we died.”

“You have the chance now,” she offers, but the words fall weak to her ears.

“You’re not dying,” he reminds her. “You’ve a whole new person to become now that there’s no one to run from and no one to kill, remember?”

Somehow, it seems he knows what she plans to do. “I’m sailing West.”

He nods jerkily several times, staring down the rather worn stag banner that graces the wall across from them. “I don’t think I can become that person here. There are too many corpses.” She hesitates. “Too many that I made.”

He does not look at her. She needs him to look at her and he will not. How else will he know what she’s trying to tell him? “I’ll explore what’s never been explored. I’ll map the edge of the world.”

“And then?” His voice is gruff.

“And then Westeros will be needing copies of those maps.”

He finally looks at her, something unnamable, untouchable, clear in his face. Hope. Disbelief. But hope.

“And the Queen in the North will need her sister, and the King of Westeros will need his sister, and the Lord of Storm’s End will need a friend.”

Something electric snaps in the room and he surges forward, hands roughly grasping at her face, lips pressed bruisingly against her own. Her own hands fly up to cover his, her own lips moving at his rhythm, burning with the force of connection. It’s more desperate than she’s ever felt him, more desperate than before they were to die at the hands of the dead. He is desperate for the promise of life.

He pulls away as abruptly and as roughly as he had kissed her. “Ser Davos is my friend,” he says, standing up, taking her with him. “Jon Snow was my friend.” He kisses her again, more sweetly, less desperate, more yearning. She breaks to gasp in a breath of air and his forehead rests against hers. “You are _everything_.”

—

As dawn is beginning to break the next morning, she pulls on her clothes, hastily discarded as they had been the night before. The dull glow of sun begins to shine on the horizon and Gendry basks in it, face still soft with dreaming, skin still sheened in sweat. After she has everything she came with, Arya rounds the bed to the side where he sleeps, nearly snorts at how comfortably he rests on a bed made of feathers. She lowers to match his level, presses her lips to his softly. His eyes do not open but he stirs and she knows he is awake. “Don’t go,” he murmurs groggily, reaching out to wrap his arms around her.

“You know I have to,” she chastises, unwinding herself from him. “My crew is waiting for me.”

“And you think anybody would question you if you wanted to wait a while longer?” He says through a grin, his eyes blinking open to squint at her in the mute morning light. She shakes her head, feigns exasperation. Doesn’t feel it. Not really.

“You’ll come back?” He whispers, fingers clinging on to hers, the sobriety of being awake clear now in his face.

She smiles, her eyes gleam. Not here, though. Not now. “Don’t think you could stop me if you wanted to.”


End file.
